Brexitwatch: the 8th possibility

On October 9, I tried to work out why Theresa May (or Theresa Mayhem as she is increasingly called) had morphed from (allegedly) anti-Brexit during the referendum campaign to fanatically pro the most extreme form of Brexit just a few weeks later. I offered seven possible explanations - http://disasterhistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/brexitwatch-what-is-theresa-may-up-to.html

An 8th has now occurred to me. Perhaps she is following the orders that Rupert Murdoch gave her during their secretive meeting in New York in September.

*A mention for my book Historia mundial de los desastres (A Disastrous History of the World) in one of Venezuela's leading periodicals - http://www.el-nacional.com/opinion/piedra-catastrofe_0_930507047.html

Bloomsday disaster

‘Heart-rending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing.’ Thus did James Joyce’s great novel, Ulysses, describe the wreck of the General Slocum which happened on this day 110 years ago.

The steamer happened to meet disaster the day before ‘Bloomsday’ – June 16, 1904, on which all the action of the novel takes place, so the characters read about it in the newspaper. The ship had chugged up New York’s East River carrying parents and children on an outing organised by a German Lutheran church.

A bale of straw on board caught fire, and the crew of 22 were unable to put it out, partly because their rotten fire hoses burst. As the flames were fanned by the ship’s motion, the crew attempted to launch lifeboats, but these were tied down and the life jackets were no good either.

By the time the ship beached at North Brother Island she was burning from end to end, and many of her passengers had drowned as they had tried to escape by jumping into the waters. Altogether, 1,021 people perished, making it the city’s worst disaster apart from 9/11. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Road accidents becoming no 1 killer

Fascinating piece in the Economist of Jan 25 on road accidents. At present, they kill about 1.3 million people a year – not far short of the number who lose their lives to tuberculosis, but the World Health Organisation expects the total to reach nearly 2 million by 2030, well outstripping tb deaths and catching up with AIDS as a killer.

The biggest increase is expected in the poorest countries, with deaths almost tripling. One of the main reasons being that when money is invested in new roads, little is spent on safety.

Already, road crashes are the main cause of death worldwide for people aged 15 to 29, with most victims men and boys. In poor countries, most of the people killed are pedestrians, while in developing countries such as Thailand, it tends to be motorcyclists.

In the developed world, better safety measures have seen road deaths actually being reduced. New York now has fewer than it did 1910, while Sweden has halved the number since 2000, cutting them by 80% since 1970.

*My updated website - http://www.disasterhistorian.com/index.html

Sandy's shadow

New York City is still facing major disruption from ‘superstorm’ Sandy.   Up to 40,000 people have been driven from their homes, public transport is still severely disrupted, and 130,000 residents are still without electricity.

Across New York State, there are another 600,000 without power, as well as nearly a million in New Jersey.    The storm is thought to have caused 106 deaths in the USA, including 40 in New York City, and another 69 in the Caribbean.

At 900 miles wide, Sandy was the largest storm ever seen in the Atlantic.   It hit the Big Apple with a record 14 foot tidal surge, shutting down the subway system, and closing nearly all the road tunnels and bridges, virtually isolating Manhattan.    The National Guard had to be called out to deliver emergency supplies.

Only last year, a report from the New York State Energy Research and Development Corporation had delivered a warning of how devastating a major storm combined with a tidal surge could be for the City.

*The Londonist website has reminded us of another 'forgotten' London fire - the Colney Hatch asylum fire of 1903.  http://londonist.com/2012/09/londons-forgotten-disasters-the-colney-hatch-fire.php.   See also p 107 of A Disastrous History of Britain.

The long arm of 9/11

More than 10 years after the attack on the World Trade Centre, New Yorkers are still developing illnesses that may be related to the disaster.   In 2004, the original fund for the injured and bereaved was closed after paying out $7 billion.

The collapse of the buildings had  released a toxic cloud of glass fibres, asbestos, lead, pulverised cement and assorted carcinogens, but just days after, the Environmental Protection Agency said the air in lower Manhattan was safe.

As people continued to fall ill, in 2010, the fund was reopened, but it did not cover cancer.    Firemen, police officers and former pupils at a school near the site are among those who have been diagnosed, but it is hard to prove their illnesses are directly related to the disaster.  

In March, an advisory committee suggested cancer should be covered, but it is not clear for how long this would extend.  As with Hiroshima and Chernobyl, for some, it might be years more before tumours appear.     There are also complaints that victims of other American disasters, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and Hurricane Katrina, were not nearly so generously compensated.

Financial disasters 2 - stock market crashes

The worst two Stock Market crashes in the UK both happened within the last 40 years. From 1972 to 1974, the market lost 70% of its value. Investor confidence was undermined by a spate of bad news, particularly the oil embargo and four-fold price increase that followed Israel’s Yom Kippur War with Egypt.

The market did not recover the ground it had lost in real terms until May 1987. Then five months later, it crashed again. On Friday, 16 October, 1987 hardly anyone was at work in London’s City financial district because of the disruption caused by the Great Storm, the worst in Britain for more than 280 years.

While they were away, prices in New York had been falling steeply. The reasons are not altogether clear - a drop in the price of the dollar, poor trade figures, just that headless chicken panic that seems to grip markets every so often? Anyway, by the time London opened on Monday, 19 October, there was huge pent-up demand to sell. £50 billion was wiped off share prices, and the date went down in history as ‘Black Monday’.

The next day’s collapse was even more precipitous, and by November 9, the index had fallen 34%. The main blame was put on ‘programme trading’ which meant that computers automatically sold shares when they dropped to a certain level, though others thought Mrs Thatcher’s ‘Big Bang’ deregulation had also played its part.

Snowstorms

More than 80 people have died in Europe because of the snowstorms of the last few days. More than 40 – mainly homeless – have frozen to death in Poland, and 27 in the Ukraine.

A restaurant owner in Krakow provided free hot meals for homeless people in the town’s beautiful main square as temperatures dropped to -20 in some places. Across the Atlantic at least five people have died as Washington’s Reagan National Airport was buried under a record 16 inches (40cm) of snow.

Two of America’s worst ever blizzards struck in 1888. In January, more than 230 people perished across the Great Plains (see my blog of Jan 12). Two months later, New York City was hit in the middle of what had been its mildest winter for 17 years.

What became known as the “Great White Hurricane” paralysed the east coast of the United States from Chesapeake Bay to Maine. Up to 60 inches (150 cm) of snow fell in some places, and winds of 50 mph (80 kph) created drifts up to 50 feet (125 cm) deep. An estimated 400 people died, including 100 in New York City. For the full story see A Disastrous History of the World.

Icebergs

On this day....153 years ago, the John Rutledge sank in the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. The passengers managed to get into lifeboats, but the seas were so rough that only one man survived. Less than a month earlier, on January 23, 1856, the SS Pacific was also lost after a similar collision. All 186 people on board were lost. Later a message was found in a bottle washed up in the Hebrides, saying “ship going down. Confusion on board. Icebergs around us on every side. I know I cannot escape.”

The Titanic, of course, is the most famous shipwreck caused by ice, and the one that caused most victims (see my blog of January 21), but there were many others, like the schooner Maria, which went down off Newfoundland carrying 111 refugees from the Irish potato famine in 1849. There were only a dozen survivors.

The SS City of Glasgow which disappeared between New York and Liverpool in January 1854 is also thought to have been a victim of icebergs. 480 passengers and crew were lost.

Bird strikes and an anniversary

It seems that a bird strike brought down the US Airways passenger jet which the pilot managed to land with such skill on the Hudson river in New York City yesterday. Mercifully no one was killed. America’s Federal Aviation Administration says it received nearly 76,000 reports of bird strikes between 1990 and 2007, and the incidents resulted in a total of 11 deaths. Last November, a Ryanair 737 had to make an emergency landing at one of Rome’s airports after birds had been sucked into one of the engines. There were only minor injuries.

The worst accident involving a bird strike came in 1960 when an Eastern Airlines flight hit a flock of starlings just after take-off from Boston in the United States damaging all four engines. It crashed into the sea killing 62 people out of 71 on board.

On this day......647 years ago. On January 16, 1362, the Grote Mandrenke or “great drowning of men” carried off at least 25,000 people, as a massive Atlantic gale caused floods in England, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.